Welcome to Issue 274 of Red All Over The Land.
I’m putting this first Issue of a new season together during a heat wave which doesn’t happen too often. If a few drops of sweat end up on the pages I do apologise but I’ve been double jabbed so you should be okay? I’m trying not to spill my Peroni though.
For many reasons I didn’t enjoy last season and not just because of how it played out. To me it was football for TV’s sake and nothing else. I was satisfied by our season end showing which enabled us to finish third; it could and should have been better but it could have been far worse. There’s no doubt our season was affected by injuries. FSG could be held responsible for a lack investment but maybe we could have raised a few quid by selling players such as Divock Origi or Harry Wilson for example? I doubt their value has increased during the past year? We had some strange team selections from Jürgen and it wasn’t until we stopped trying the square pegs in round holes tactic that things improved. We were top at Christmas but then came down faster than the decorations in our house. I doubt any of the games experts could explain how we came to lose six homes games on the spin! Or how we stopped scoring at Anfield! Some fans even cited moving from Melwood to Kirkby as a reason for the fall from grace but whatever let’s move forward and see what happens when the new season begins. A season where the vast majority of players will have had a pre-season and looking at those who reported for training at the foot of the Alps it looked a stronger squad than we had at our disposal at any time during the past year and that’s allowing for the fact we still had players who’d been involved in the Euros or Copa América to return.
On the transfer front to date, we’ve only signed one player, Ibrahima Konate and only Gini Wijnaldum from the first team squad has left. I’d like to think we could sign more but I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t. We’re linked with a different player everyday but I only believe a player is signing when they get the shirt on and play. It gets boring and whatever is going on with Jordan Henderson; leave it to the powers that be. Our view won’t make any difference.
As for Red All Over The Land we will be hopefully back on sale at Anfield and we have discussed this with the club who have no problem with us being around the stadium. We will continue with our Red All Over YouTube and hope it grows as we go along.
Finally, on Saturday November 13th we are hoping to hold our belated 25th Anniversary night at The Florrie. The groundwork has started and as things develop I will keep everyone informed by whatever means I can. By the time we bring Issue 275 out it should all be finalised.
So, here we go again. On the field we’re all hoping for the same thing. Success. FSG have made errors of judgement in the past but we have to be realistic, they haven’t got the bottomless pit that Manchester City and Chelsea can tap into. Even so, Jürgen has a wealth of talent at his disposal and if we can add a few bits and get through without all those injuries we could be riding high. No predictions though.
JJP: So Football didn’t come home which was good news because it meant the Baddiel & Skinner comeback was cancelled.